


A Garden For Jinyoung

by pepijr



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Astronaut AU, Light Angst, M/M, Sci-fi-ish, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-11-13 04:54:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18025070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepijr/pseuds/pepijr
Summary: In which Jinyoung wants to see a garden and Jaebum just wants to see him happy.





	1. Europa.

**Author's Note:**

> as i tally up the final votes for the other fic, here's something else : )

There used to be flowers.

They used to grow on bushes at the edge of the street, in private gardens, in homemade pots. They used to hang from branches busy with leaves, used to push out of damp mounds of soil, used to sit proud on top of cactuses. People used to put flowers in vases around their home, pinned them to lapels, wrapped them around their wrists. Used to show their love with bright, red bunches of roses on Valentine’s, used to mourn at funerals with clusters of white carnations. 

“They used to be everywhere,” his mother tells him.

There might have been flowers but in this room, with the quiet whir of the air conditioning settling around them like smoke, with the white walls grayed by dim lights, the steady beeps of machines and curls of wires, the white of the hospital bed, the wrinkles in its sheets, he can’t picture them. In this world, burdened with too much sun, with too much heat, flowers seem impossible.

“Before you were born,” she continues, “When I was a little girl.” 

He has never admitted to his mother that he hates  _ before _ , though it’s never the time he hates, it’s never the flowers or the brightness of the old world. He just hates living in the  _ after _ ; after the tear in the sky opened up, surrounded their planet like a shell; after its center amplified the sunlight and made it shine too intensely, for too long; after the world started to decay in leaps, as if the planet had surrendered after a long fight; after the world started drying up, after people began to die of new mutations, after countless nations were clumped together into four; after flowers became a thing to read about and not see.  

Jinyoung takes his mother’s hand in his, rubs her cold knuckles with his thumb. His mother looks off into the corner, lets her gaze settle on nothing, and gets lost in thought. He always wonders what she thinks about, whether she still pictures a future or simply roams the hallways of her past, walking into the rooms of her memories. 

She closes her eyes and Jinyoung waits one minute, then two, then three, counts the seconds under his breath. When he tries to pull his hand back, his mother’s fingers tighten around his wrist. 

“I have one left,” she says, “Can you bring it to me?” 

“You have what left?” 

“A flower,” she whispers, not out of desire to keep a secret, but from a lack of strength, “I want to see it. I miss it.” 

Something inside him bends, like a pole of metal twisted by the violent strength of a magnet, wrapped around by force; like barbed wire being shaped. Maybe pleasure died with flowers, he thinks, and the rest is bleak, dull throbs of pain, moments of loss; bees of hope that no longer have a place to land.

But on his face he wears a smile as he pats his mother’s hand, gives it a squeeze. He nods in her direction, though her eyes have already closed and her breathing has slowed. He walks to the door, into the hallway, down the stairs, enters the lobby. He tries to leave but he never makes it to the door — someone calls his name, runs after him. He doesn’t turn, instead he stares at the gush of sunlight coming in from the hospital entrance: it looks insistent, as if alive, elbowing its way inside, clawing at the frames of the door, demanding to be seen. 

He finally turns and finds a nurse looking pensive, nervous. She looks at him, then behind her, and then up at the ceiling. He follows her gaze, and, as if knowing exactly what she’s looking at, he nods.

“It happened,” she tells him. 

That’s how his mother dies: lungs half-empty, her memories broken and out of order, hoping, wishing, dreaming of seeing one last beautiful thing before she left. 

“Do you have anyone to take you home?” she asks him.

“Yes.” No one is coming to pick him up — he has no one left. “My grandma will be here soon.” 

A week later, the letter arrives. The envelope is white, large, and it takes Jinyoung a few tries to open it. In the end, he claws it open, nearly rips the contents in half. He’s been invited, it says, to attend the MESO academy, the same one his father dreamed of attending. He looks around at the empty kitchen. Seven days and not one person has come looking for him, not one person has noticed that his mother is gone or that Jinyoung, at fifteen, has stopped showing up to school. 

He slips the letter back into the envelope and starts to pack. 

A few days later, Jinyoung steps off the bullet train and into the garish light of Quadrant I. 

☉

“Give it back!” 

Jinyoung watches Jaebum chase Hyunwoo through the hallway, around the tiny couch and chair, the even tinier table that sits between them. Whenever Jaebum has him cornered, Hyunwoo finds a way to slip out of his grasp, always faster, more clever, willing to do things like climb over kitchen counters and over chairs, risking injuries for a good laugh. Hyunwoo — older, and much bigger than Jaebum — takes pleasure in stealing his things, in teasing, in the immaturity he’s allowed. Jinyoung, from the safety of his bedroom, watches Hyunwoo dart from the kitchen to the living room, then into the hallway outside. Jaebum curses and mutters, then the apartment goes silent. Jinyoung goes back to reading from the small screen of his tablet, the only light in the room. Then someone knocks on the open door and he looks up. 

Jaebum is standing there holding two bottles of water. He smiles — the usual dazzling smile, loose and cocked to one side — and Jinyoung feels the familiar pinch in his stomach. He is 23 and still in love, madly so. He still isn’t used to the sight of Jaebum roaming around the apartment, isn’t used to his smile, the way his eyes thin and almost disappear. He isn’t used to the light of the living room framing his silhouette, reminding Jinyoung of the sturdy lines of his torso, of his thighs. Jaebum is not tall, but he isn’t short either. His torso is long and tapers into thin hips, and the briefs he wear make his legs look longer than they are. It isn’t the nudity that warms Jinyoung, even in the cool dark of the room, but the confidence in Jaebum’s stance. The slight tilt, the straight back, the proud protruding chest. As if the world were his to roam. 

“Are you reading something important? Do you want some quiet time?” Jaebum asks. 

Jinyoung looks down at the screen, decides to close the reader. He never reads anything important anymore — he memorizes important instructions a few days after they receive them. Instead he spends his time reading about the past, about the life he could have led — they could have  _ both _ led. He dreams of mountains speckled with white snow, of jungles dense with lively greens, of farms surrounded by endless crops; each new dream is like a balloon he ties to his wrist. The more he dreams, the closer he is to floating away. 

But right now he shakes his head and lets his dreams go, pats the spot next to him. He moves to the edge of the bed, the one pressed against the wall, so Jaebum has room. 

The water, by then, isn’t cold, only vaguely warm. Jinyoung takes a quick sip as Jaebum stretches on the bed, feet dangling over the edge. Jinyoung, tossing the bottle to the floor, lays on his back, lifts and rests his leg over Jaebum’s so their skin rubs together; Jaebum lays a hand over Jinyoung’s thigh at the crease where it meets his hips, where his briefs end. 

This is the intimacy that the heat allows: some sort of touching, no matter how small, no matter how uncomfortable. Even if him and Jaebum and Hyunwoo and the rest of the boys spend most of their time in underwear, trying to escape the added heat of clothing, the temperature is still just tolerable. Ever since the air conditioning had been cut down to just a few hours a day, they’ve all been walking around wearing a light layer of sweat. 

“Have you thought about it?” Jaebum asks. Jinyoung sighs, shakes his head. 

“We have five years to think about it.” 

“But five years is such a short time,” Jaebum whines, closes his eyes. His thumb rubs the top of Jinyoung’s thighs and they both follow that rhythm with their thoughts, spinning in circles. Each of Jinyoung’s nerves flock there, to the short curve of the thumb, the slide of sweat. His entire body fills with a low hum, like static. 

“Five years is five years,” Jinyoung manages to say, though his voice is low, dreamy, as if he were talking in his sleep, “I still have to think of something.” 

“What do you mean of something?” 

“I don’t know what’s worth asking for.”

At this, Jaebum opens an eye, peers over at Jinyoung, who does the same. They share a smile. 

“You’re telling me you get offered anything in the world —  _ anything _ you could possibly want — and you don’t have a list of demands already? Like even silly ones?” 

Jinyoung shakes his head, closes his eyes. It isn’t that he doesn’t want anything, it’s that he wants the impossible. Unlike the others, after reading and  listening to his mother’s stories, he thinks the world they live in is hellish. Quadrant I and II, although wealthy, lack the life that the past had. He wants bushes of roses, he wants a cat, wants to eat a salad, wants to ride a horse, wants to see the sunrise without the worry of protection. 

He wants the world, but he can’t have it. 

“You’re crazy,” Jaebum says. Then he shifts in bed and tugs on Jinyoung’s arms, wraps his hands around Jinyoung's waist until they are on their side, face to face, their chests pressed together. This position is almost unbearable, hot and stuffy and Jinyoung feels like his thigh — pinned between Jaebum’s — is on fire, his skin boiling. But beneath that he finds the cool water of desire, like a river that runs down his spine, then spreads into tiny creeks, little icy pools that let him breath, that let him groan and stretch his neck and close his eyes when Jaebum presses a slow path of kisses down the length of Jinyoung’s throat. 

“I have an idea, “ he murmurs in between kisses, “About what I want  _ right now _ . Can you help me?” 

Jinyoung smiles, feels nervous flutters at the base of his stomach like the first time — like every time. 

“Lock the door,” he whispers, “And maybe I can.” 

☉

The first time he sees Jinyoung, Jaebum feels anything but love. 

He doesn’t hate him, no, despite what he claims later to his team, despite what he says for years to come when someone asks him how he’d met Jinyoung, how they’d fallen in love.

“The first time I saw him,” he’ll say, smiling, folding years of their lives into a single story at a dinner, “I  _ hated _ him, his team, his haircut — everything about him just pissed me off.”

But he doesn’t feel the embers of rage, doesn’t feel them rising to his throat; there is no fire in his chest; no hardening in his heart. Instead what he feels is surprise and shock, a sudden weightlessness, like the ground beneath him has vanished and he is falling infinitely, still waiting to land. 

It never quite feels like he does, not after Jinyoung enters his life. 

MESO Academy was split into two subdivisions: the technical school, where the kids more apt to design and theorize space travel attended, and the nontechnical school, where the classes were more head-on, focused on leadership more than software proficiency. Despite this, both schools had almost identical programs; the difference was ego. 

Months after he turns sixteen, though, already well into his second year, the academy decides to merge both schools as part of preparation for a mission. MESO, it seemed, had finally zeroed in on a solution to the rift. It would take twelve years to finalize plans, to train a new team of people since the seasoned pilots — like Jaebum’s father — were in states of decay, either dead or dying from the mutations. In the meantime, only the students with the most potential would continue to attend MESO; the schools would be joined; a team would be birthed. 

Only ten students would be left: five from each school, two teams, with a leader in each. 

Jaebum, at the top of his class, was immediately chosen. None of his peers had issues with it — they were all friends, they all knew how hard Jaebum worked, and they knew he was a legacy. He had been born to do this.

Yet, as a teacher ushers them into a small auditorium with an even smaller stage, they have doubts; not of themselves, but the other school. The technical’s best was underwhelming: they were small kids, no doubt had skipped grades, had the look of intelligence, most wore thick glasses, looked painfully shy. Jaebum and Hyunwoo and the rest of the piloting team were all athletes, both smart and physically proficient — it’s what they had to be to get into MESO in the first place. 

They sit on the right side of the technical students, in a single row. Jaebum is at the edge, with Hyunwoo at his side. As their teacher stands at the podium, discussing the new changes, Hyunwoo leans in to whisper in his ear, “Did you see those losers?” 

They both give each other a pained look, as if being young and geeky were contagious. But the assembly continues and Jaebum almost forgets the other team until the leaders are announced.

“The leader from the piloting school,” the man on stage says, lowering his glasses to the tip of his nose as he reads the reports, “At the top of his class, Jaebum comes first in engineering, combat, mathematics, and science. Perfect score in civics, too. Please come up front.” 

The other four members of his team make an uproar of shouting and applause, less out of pride and more out of a teenage boys’ need to be obnoxious. Jaebum makes his way to the stage, clasps his hands together behind his back. He looks out to the stage but at nothing in particular; he is smiling — the shape somewhere between embarrassed, humble, and proud. Excellence, he knows, runs in his veins, but for a second it feels like it’s all his own; like in another life, another body, greatness would still find him.

“And the leader from the technical school,” the man continues, “Also top of his class, Jinyoung matches Jaebum’s scores in civics, engineering, combat, mathematics,  _ and  _ science.” 

This is when the surprise comes — he’d been miles ahead of his classmates, after all. This greatness is great because it can’t be replicated, not so easily, and especially not by  _ those  _ boys from the technical school. There is no, way, he thinks, there must be a mistake, and like an answer to his prayer, the man speaks up again.

“Correction. Jinyoung has a higher score in combat and engineering, the rest is the same.” 

And then surprise hardens into shock, a calloused feeling, like a pebble in his throat that refuses to budge. He cannot talk, barely holds his face into a stern expression. He wrestles with his instinct to yell, to run, to challenge the thin, tan boy with the short, messy hair walking to the stage into a boxing match. This boy — Jinyoung — doesn’t even look excited to be there. He looks serious, a bit bored, as if there was something else he could be doing; as if being better than Jaebum were on the usual schedule.

“Please applaud your two new leaders, boys. They will be piloting our upcoming mission with the rest of you as support — the world is counting on every single one of you.” 

As the auditorium fills with polite applause, Jaebum decides that he must hate Jinyoung. Hate, it seems, is his last defense, though against what, he isn’t sure. He sneaks a glance to his right where Jinyoung is looking down at his feet, as if embarrassed. 

He doesn’t hate him, no, but he’ll say he did because what he  _ does  _ feel is something else; his heart pinches, tightens like a small fist. When Jinyoung looks up and meets his gaze, not with a smile but with a pleading look, as if wishing this all could be over, Jaebum almost reaches over to stroke his cheek, to fix the lock of hair sticking up near his ear. Instead, he smiles. To his delight, Jinyoung smiles back and the future brightens just a little. 

Despite the schools joining, they keep their old arrangements: separate dorms, only some shared classes, sporadic lunches together. Jaebum has let go of his false hatred, but what remains is vast and soft. Jaebum and Jinyoung are given separate instructions and put into rooms together to go over problems, to get to know each other better. Their teachers hope a bond might build between them, and it does, something  _ does  _ unfold. Something they could spend the next twelve years just trying to put into words. 

At first it’s nebulous, this feeling, as mysterious as a night sky. Jaebum could try for hours to make sense of it, to study how his body reacts, how it warms in Jinyoung’s presence, how the world softens by degrees. He could study Jinyoung, too, because every little thing about him fascinates Jaebum: the way he chews on his lip when he concentrates on an equation, the way he looks up at the ceiling when he talks about his family, as if they were there, waving at him; the way his eyes tear up when he finds out how quickly the other Quadrants are losing water, how pained he looks for days; the look of surprise when Jaebum brings him a snack, the flustered look when Jaebum — finally — reaches over and fixes the hair at the side of his head, makes a point of running his finger over the warm shell of his ear. 

All these moments are like stars claiming a place in his feeling, small and dazzling, making the emotion more clear, pulling the far into the near. 

A few weeks later he realizes these moments are constellations when he hears yelling in the hallway, near the training room. He recognizes Hyunwoo’s voice, as loud as it’s always been; familiar in its confident boom. Then comes another voice, also shouting, but much smaller with the faintest hint of a lisp — Jinyoung. Jaebum leaps up from bed and runs outside, follows the voices.

At the end is Hyunwoo with Sungjin and Jackson behind him, all three looking as if they might pounce. On the other side is Jinyoung, a few inches smaller than Hyunwoo, looking up with so much anger that Jaebum’s stomach drops. 

“You better fucking leave him alone!” Jinyoung yells, raises his hands to push Hyunwoo back, “You better not even breathe in Yugyeom’s direction.” 

“Or what?!” Hyunwoo says, defiant as always, aggressive; he looms over Jinyoung, but Jinyoung doesn’t back down. In fact, when Hyunwoo goes to push him, Jinyoung does the opposite of backing down: in two swift punches — one to the gut, one to the jaw — he has Hyunwoo bent over, choking and confused. Then all Jinyoung has to do is grab his arm and flip him, and Hyunwoo’s body tumbles with the suggestion. He falls on his back, gasping for air.

Jinyoung pushes Hyunwoo’s head with the tip of his shoes. 

“Fucking bully,” he says and walks away, leaving Jackson and Sungjin behind to assess the damage.

It will take four years for Jaebum to say it, but he knows then, as his lungs fill with laughter, as Hyunwoo gasps for breath and Jackson starts to laugh, too, that this galaxy of a feeling, overflowing with constellations all pointing him in the same direction, towards the same conclusion, that he is, and might always be, in love with Jinyoung. 

☉

Jaebum is on his way to the cafeteria when the president of Quadrant II declares war. The rest of the boys are in transit, too — some are headed to the training room, others to read in the study hall, and some are settling down to sit still in the dark of their room to try and will the heat away. None of them see the broadcast that runs on every channel: the parched president, out of breath, still crying as he explains in broken sentences that they’ve run out of water. 

“We need to survive,” he manages to say after announcing the mobilization of his army, “I’m sorry.” 

But the boys don’t know a thing until the sirens go off. In every hallway, in every room, a red bulb flickers on and starts to spin; a robotic voice announces an inaudible protocol; in the distance, a bell starts to ring, tries to be heard above the commotion as if shouting at the top of its lungs. 

Everyone meets in the auditorium. Jaebum catches Jinyoung’s eye across the room before they sit, but there is nothing to say. They each know nothing. Their director, looking just as troubled as the president had less than an hour ago, makes the announcement. 

“There’s — there’s been a change of plans. Quadrant II is now at war with us,” he pauses to allow the surprise to blossom in sighs, in widened eyes, in parted lips, “We have some time still — we have the bigger army, there’s no doubt we are safe.” 

A moment of silence unravels in the room. Nobody in their seats move, even Jaebum, who so desperately wants to reach over and take Jinyoung’s hand for the sake of knowing he’s still there and safe, sits still. He slows his breathing, tries to focus on the director.

“In order to spare any unnecessary bloodshed,” he continues, “The president has asked me to carry out the Europa mission, effective next week.” 

This announcement is what troubles Jaebum, what makes his heart sink until it beats in his stomach. Europa, a mission twelve years in the making, a mission that glimmered in the distance, so far away from the present that any worries regarding it had been placed in a box and put away, out of sight. Each little grain of fear and doubt about Europa come rushing forward now. Jaebum’s heart starts to race, the back of his neck begins to sweat. 

The mission is simple: two ships, one orbit around the planet. All they had to do was get close enough to the rift and unload a fleet of bombs they had designed themselves, strong enough to disrupt anything — even rips in space, they hoped. This would all be done from a safe distance, avoiding the fatal mistakes of others before them: getting too close, too cocky. 

It had taken two years to set up the framework, another two years to finalize designs and testing. The remaining eight years would be dedicated to preparation, to finetuning, to making sure every detail was perfect. But to Jaebum it had meant more: eight years with Jinyoung, eight years to enjoy him, eight years to build a life together in the  _ before  _ so that they could thrive in the _after_. It was supposed to be a predictable eight years full of routine, full of safety, security — not this. Definitely not war, and definitely not Europa. 

He decides he doesn’t care, goes to reach for Jinyoung’s hand but that’s when he notices Jinyoung has reached for his first. Jinyoung has a grip on Jinyoung’s fingers, his nails digging crescents into his palm. Both of their hands are nervous, sweaty, and when Jaebum looks up his heartbeat stutters. Jinyoung is looking at him with that same pleading look he wore the first day they met and for a second Jaebum thinks this is a vivid memory. Jinyoung's eyebrows push together, form a small wrinkle between them; his lip quivers from time to time, as if he’s about to cry; Jinyoung looks so  _ young  _ that Jaebum’s voice falters. He’s sure this is a dream but then the sirens turn on again and the director yells at someone behind him to go turn them off and Yugyeom is crying and Hyunwoo stands so quickly that some of the chairs around him fall and Sungjin yells and Jinyoung's hands tremble against his and it’s clear that this is no dream. This is how  _ before  _ ends, falling to pieces, turned to rubble to make room for the  _ after _ . 

Jinyoung is still looking at him, still pleading, and like all those years ago, Jaebum tries to muster up a smile but Jinyoung doesn’t smile back. He leans forward until his forehead is resting on Jaebum’s shoulder. He starts to cry. 


	2. The Rift.

A few month after the rift tears into the sky, people start staking their claims. 

First the scientists arrive but don’t stay long. There is nothing to declare, after all, and the rift is almost impossible to study closely. They manage to discover that despite its flat appearance, like a broken piece of glass caught in the sky, the rift’s actual shape is a funnel. Some scientists theorize that it collects sunlight like water in a basin, dispersing it slowly over time, making the days longer, hotter. 

After them, come the fanatics. Some claim that the rift is a glimpse of heaven and they look up at it with raised arms, beg for forgiveness. Those that look the longest are the first to die: the rift brings new, incomprehensible mutations. People grow lumps in their necks, behind their knees. Others have growths that look like extra feet coming out of their ankles, a second arm under an armpit. This makes the fanatics claim the world is ending, that judgement day has come; and for a lot of people, the world does end. Small countries are wiped out, others are left with half their population. After years, those that manage to survive stay indoors and go underground and join into four nations: Quadrants I, II, III, and IV. 

The madness, as always, settles. Even in disaster there is routine, and with routine comes injustice: Quadrant I claims most of the resources, attracts most of the wealthy elite, and Quadrant II allows it for a price; Quadrant III struggles to get by, and Quadrant IV races towards extinction. 

This is when Jinyoung’s grandmother, a wealthy woman of Quadrant II, comes in. She leads a coalition of women who aim to end the rampant thirst and famine in Quadrant IV, though their efforts are primitive. They move resources from Quadrant II to Quadrant IV, but they only manage to slow the inevitable. After all, every Quadrant is running out of water, every Quadrant needs help, and soon her efforts are reprimanded and she is restricted, immobilized. Her coalition becomes a piece of history. 

Her fight, though, is passed down to her daughter — Jinyoung’s mother. If her mother was a candle of hope, her daughter is a forest fire: blazing, unapologetic. She not only continues what her mother started, but fights new battles, lights new flames, demands justice where it is refused. She spends more time outside, campaigning, rioting, trying to find hope where there is none. By the time Jinyoung is born, she’s narrowed down the rift into one thing: the enemy. 

And so he grows up avoiding the sky, his eyes on his shoes, on his mother’s skirt, his grandmother’s hospital gown and the lumps on her forehead. The sky he comes to know, intimately, is not his own, but the one in books, in history; the sky even his mother forgets to remember. He dreams of closing the gap in the sky for his mother and winning the war for her, as if closing the rift were as easy as sewing it shut. Even when he grows older and he realizes this is an impossibility, he still dreams and hides a needle and a spool of blue thread in his bedside drawer. 

After his mother dies, though, he takes to looking at the sky. If it’s a gate to heaven, he thinks, maybe he can see her in there; maybe she has wings; maybe she’s made entirely of flowers. Then the first expedition to explore it gets sucked into the center and nothing from that mission returns, not even a single radio wave. Everything repeats itself after that: religions claim the disaster, panic surges, people inhale, exhale, everything resets. 

But what stays with Jinyoung the most is the rant of a middle-aged man with a telescope who claims to have seen stars from another time in the rift. It is not a door to heaven, he claims, but door into time. Others start to claim the same thing: they see planes from the past, the ship from the first moon landing, the star of Bethlehem. Soon, they label him a hoax — a conspiracy theorist — but despite this, Jinyoung keeps the theory with him, stashed away at the back of his thoughts; dormant but not forgotten. 

And next to the needle and spool of thread, he puts an old, yellowed map of stars from thousands of years ago. His favorite constellations he highlights in blue. He starts to dream of flying. 

—

In three days they will be orbiting the planet but for now they navigate another kind of space: the pitch-black of their room, guided only by touch and sound, their bodies naked, excited. 

Jinyoung has his arms stretched in front of him, palms facing outward and he treads slowly. He is afraid of hitting his toe on the frame of the bed or running into the wall but Jaebum is more careless. He can hear Jaebum grunt and crash against something that rattles, then a wall, then, finally, he hears the mattress creak. 

“Are you okay?” he whispers, takes a tiny step in the direction of the bed.

“Yes,” Jaebum answers with a small laugh, as small as a bell ringing, “Come here. I didn’t drop it.” 

He starts to follow the sound of his voice, but as soon as it’s gone, Jinyoung feels stranded. There is no light whatsoever, and his eyes, somehow, refuse to adjust so the dark stretches endlessly in front of him, to the right of him, to the left — everywhere he looks.

“Keep talking,” he urges and Jaebum starts again.

“Okay — what should I say? Have I told you that I loved you today? I did already, I said it three times at breakfast — I wasn’t counting but Jackson was and he made fun of me later. Well, here’s for a fourth one: I love you. And I really want you to find me in this room because I want to show you how much I love you, I mean, I do in many ways but I’m kind of really horny and —”

His voice gets louder and louder until Jinyoung feels the edge of the bed on his shin and he lowers himself on to the mattress. He uses his hands to break the fall and one hand lands on the sheets and the other on skin, on muscle. He trails his fingers along its shape until he realizes it’s Jaebum’s thigh and underneath his fingers he can feel the muscles tighten and ripple as he reaches higher and higher, feels the prickle of hair, goes from the top of his knee to the inner thigh to the line where his leg meets his hips and from here, finally, he taps his fingers against Jaebum’s length. He takes it in his hand, and Jaebum’s breath gets caught in his throat. Then there are fingers on his arms — Jaebum’s hands — holding his forearm gently as Jinyoung gives Jaebum’s cock a few loving strokes. And with the fingers tight on his arm, he has enough information to lean forward and find Jaebum’s lips with a kiss.

Without the distraction of seeing, the kiss envelops him entirely: his world is suddenly a wet tongue sliding around his, his world is Jaebum’s perfect teeth, the roof of his mouth, the inside of his lip that rubs against his own. He wishes he could fall asleep in these lips, that he could live in this kiss, and by the way Jaebum kisses him back, his tongue trying to inch farther and farther into his mouth, Jinyoung knows he wishes the same. 

Slowly, their bodies align and move so that Jaebum is flat on his back, both legs on the bed, sturdy and taut and Jinyoung is on top of him, his thigh settled between Jaebum’s, the other bent so that when he starts rutting his hips, his cock rubs against Jaebum’s. It doesn’t take long for them to be hard, for Jinyoung to kiss Jaebum’s shoulder and for Jaebum’s breath to caress his neck and shoulder and for Jaebum to reach one hand down, to clasp his ass, to spread and knead and touch the cheek like he needs it to live. And then his grip gets tight and rough and Jinyoung lets out a breath and Jaebum says, “You’re beautiful.” 

“You can’t even see me,” Jinyoung says and Jaebum’s hand lifts off his bottom and disappears for a second, reappears on Jinyoung’s neck, slides to his jaw, then Jaebum’s fingers touch his cheeks, his nose, trace his eyebrow, pinch his earlobe, a warm parade of skin against skin. 

“Still beautiful,” Jaebum says and Jinyoung laughs, flushed, glad there is no light in the room so Jaebum can’t see how flustered he is, how red, how sensitive he still is to every single one of his words. Then Jaebum’s fingers disappear again and he hears the click of the lube bottle opening.

“Sit up,” Jaebum says and Jinyoung does as told, scoots back to sit on Jaebum’s thighs and then he feels movement, feels the heat and sweat under his thighs. Jaebum’s legs harden and soften against Jinyoung’s skin, and when everything is still again, everything quiet, he reaches forward, follows the shape of Jaebum’s thigh to his cock. He can’t see it glisten, but he imagines it does because it’s coated in lube, warm and slippery and he takes his times studying it with his fingers: the ridge where the head begins, the thick vein wrapped around it, the curve of its side, the prickle of hair near the base and the slit on the tip. He strokes him slowly, sometimes with just a finger, which makes Jaebum pant, and sometimes with both hands tight, Jaebum’s cock slipping from his hold like soap, which makes Jaebum groan. He does it for so long that when he scoots up on Jaebum’s body, sits on the bottom of his stomach so that the tip of his cock presses insistently on the cheek of his ass, throbbing there gently, his fingers are slick enough that he can prepare himself. The slide of his fingers is smooth, meant to coat his entrance rather than give him pleasure. 

“Are you ready?” Jaebum asks, runs his hand along Jinyoung’s sweaty side and he melts into that wet glide, he melts into the touches that follow, that roam from his lower back to his shoulders, that squeeze his nipple and stroke his chest and holds his neck for a second before they fall to his hips again, Jaebum touching him like he’s never felt a figure before, like he’ll never see Jinyoung again, that only this memory will stay. This touch, that glide, these loose grips, and Jinyoung nods despite himself, Jinyoung nods because he forgets that they can’t see — he is too lost in the moment. Jaebum’s fingers dig into his skin, leaving prints that only he feels; like the ghost of Jaebum’s hand remains, burning him. 

“Yes,” he manages after a second and reaches back, finds Jaebum’s cock, holds it in his hand; he feels it throb a few times against his palm before it twitches. He gives it a stroke, lines the head up to his entrance and pauses for a second. Against his thighs he can feel the rise and fall of Jaebum’s stomach as he breathes, his fingers wrapped around the bone of his hips and Jinyoung breathes, too, as he sinks slowly, stretches out for Jaebum, something close to bursting and a perfect fit. He is not used to it and he never will be, not when he pays attention to each of his nerves and how they panic in pain at the intrusion, and how this melts, slowly, into pleasure. His chest tightens when he holds his breath until he’s sitting flush in Jaebum’s lap and his cock is all the way inside and he feels the bristle of his pubes against his rim and the excess lube sliding out from him. Then he lets go of his breath and Jaebum does, too — they breath together after this, when Jinyoung lifts his hips and lowers them back again, when the friction sends their nerves into ecstasy, when Jaebum’s cock slips out and they have to put it in again with clumsy, excited fingers, together. 

He lowers himself again, takes a second to enjoy the pleasure, the feeling of Jaebum pressed against his thighs, against his bottom, hot inside of him, almost boiling, a heat so wonderful and mysterious that he lets his neck bend, his head thrown back. He lets Jaebum lifts his hips and hold them in the air as he starts to push upwards with his thighs, as he starts to fuck him with all his youth and restless energy and all these nerves that Jinyoung has been holding since the announcement are suddenly ripped from him and lost somewhere between the wet smacks of skin, the sound of lube and cum mixing, slamming together as Jaebum goes faster and faster, desperate, chasing a different kind of galaxy, making Jinyoung see stars behind his eyes every time he pounds their hips together; emptying him of every sound and whimper in his throat, the breaths in his lungs. 

And each time the slide is smoother and their skin is more damp and Jaebum’s cock is slippery and large and he wishes he could see his face, could see his mouth tightening like usual, his jaw jutting out, but he settles for leaning forward and letting his back slump when he props himself up on his arms, his hands pressed against Jaebum’s chest. There is muscle here, and this excites Jinyoung even more, like they are just bodies coming together, but there is something else, too: faint, racing, Jaebum’s heartbeat rattles against his chest and Jinyoung’s fingers tighten and grip his muscle, as if trying to hear his heart better, but Jaebum keeps ramming his cock up, into him and it’s hard to hear, hard to focus. Jaebum is beneath him but he’s also everywhere, his heartbeat drumming in his ears, his voice in his throat, on his tongue, in the heat that makes the room a stuffy kind of heaven, where he is alone with the man he loves, the man who makes love him like the world might end tomorrow — and it might, but he’s here, his body trembling every time their hips meet with a smack, the bed creaking wildly. 

He leans forward, finds Jaebum’s lips with his and they try to kiss but their breaths break it up so that their lips slide against each other’s, messy and wet and full of hot breaths that sting and soothe and Jinyoung is down to propping himself up on elbows, his legs bent, Jaebum grabbing his ass and pushing his cheeks together as if he wants to wrap as much of Jinyoung as he can around his cock, and then he stops. 

Everything sits still for a second. Their breaths fill his ears and their heartbeats drum against his bones and faintly he can feel Jaebum’s dick still inside him, throbbing quietly, impatient as Jaebum says in his ear, “Let’s switch spots.” 

But the request is a formality — Jinyoung drapes his arms around Jaebum’s neck and wraps his legs around his middle so that his toes curl and his feet meet at the small of Jaebum’s back and somehow Jaebum flips them without slipping out, flips them seamlessly so that Jinyoung’s back lands against sheets soaked in their sweat and so that he has only a second to breathe before Jaebum resumes ramming into him, this time cleaner and deeper, deep enough that Jinyoung can no longer make words. Only sounds come out, a honeyed string, a ribbon — it sounds obscene and sweet and his eyes roll back and he feels stretched and alive and on fire and cool, too, and his spine is cluttered with little sparks that go off and he clenches, tightens, his toes curl, his lips part. 

And then he feels tiny drops fall on his cheek, then his nose, then his tongue and it tastes like sea-salt — Jaebum must be sweating bucketfuls so he reaches up to push his hair back, cranes his neck to press a shaky kiss against his forehead, not wet just damp but the drops keep coming and Jaebum’s hips slow, turn in slow circles that drag the head of Jaebum’s cock against his walls and make Jinyoung’s stomach feel heavy and full and all his nerves start to point to his balls, the base of his own cock — he’s close but the friction is close to stopping, too. All the while, the drops keep falling and he licks his lips, savors the taste, goes up to push Jaebum’s hair back again, to wipe away some of the sweat but he touches his cheek instead and it’s wet. He touches the other one and it’s wet, too.

“Are you crying?” he whispers and Jaebum’s lips find the crook of Jinyoung’s neck with a kiss, with a rough bite of skin, with all his weight coming down on Jinyoung and he savors this: the shape of their bodies tangled, joined, their chests together, Jaebum inside him, warm, both so close that they might burst; the heat, the sweat, the smell of Jaebum permeated in his nose, his weight, the muscles on his back that Jinyoung traces now as a tiny whimper runs through Jaebum. 

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Jaebum says and his hips resume, slower this time, less focused on climaxing and more on exploring Jinyoung and he feels it, too; he feels explored, navigated and stretched to the point of breaking; Jaebum’s cock rubs up against his walls in new angles that make him curl his toes, that make him reach down to stroke his own cock until he comes with a tiny shudder and it feels like a flare touches every single one of his nerves before it gathers at the base of his cock, rushes out with spurts of come. Jaebum is still gnawing on his neck so that he leaves a mark and Jinyoung, catching his breath, feeling his insides rearranged, feeling raw from where Jaebum is still fucking him,  _ wants  _ him to leave a mark. He wants Jaebum to be with him, in whatever form, whatever shape.

Jaebum is still crying when he comes, his head still buried in Jinyoung’s neck and all Jinyoung can do is hold his head, kiss his neck, run his finger along the short hair on his nape as he feels the spurts of come climb up inside him. All he can do is remain still as Jaebum’s body goes from stiff to limp, throbbing; he is still inside him when he softens and Jinyoung feels the come sit and pool, then leak out slowly, trickling down and out, curving to the bottom of his spine, the bottom of his back, before it drips and soaks the sheets. Jinyoung, without being able to see Jaebum, digs his nose into his hair and inhales the scent of sweat, of soap, of shampoo, of the smoke from this morning, the halls, the bedroom, and his own scent buried somewhere in these layers. 

He’s close to crying, too, but instead he kisses Jaebum’s neck and squeezes his shoulders and tilts his head to the side so he can take Jaebum’s ear between his teeth and say, “Make it five times.” 

Jaebum’s laugh is quiet but Jinyoung can feel it run through him, like a tremor, and he can feel everything that fills his body — the joy of laughter and the grief of the future, heavy on his bones, heavy on Jinyoung.

“I love you,” he whispers and Jinyoung is glad they have conquered this mission, as mysterious as the night sky, as the rift. He feels complete — even when Jaebum pulls out with a groan, even when they settle onto their backs, don’t even bother to wipe off the come on Jaebum’s stomach or the come between Jinyoung’s thighs. In the dark, they find each other as usual: Jaebum on his back, his chest exposed, his legs long and straight, one arm around Jinyoung’s waist and Jinyoung folds himself, lays one leg over Jaebum’s middle, as if protecting him, anchoring him and one of his arms goes beneath Jaebum, the other across his chest. 

They don’t wake up for hours. 

—

It takes three years for Jaebum to kiss Jinyoung.

He never doubts that he will be the one to initiate a romance. Jinyoung is hopelessly shy and aloof, prefers books to people, reading to socializing, and Jaebum is the one that sets goals for himself and reaches them, that laughs too loud in the lunchroom, that has too many friends to count. But, as the years unfold around them, he realizes that where Jinyoung is concerned, Jaebum's just as shy, too.

For years they take showers together, just the two of them given their schedule, and for years Jaebum thinks of kissing him then, when his eyes are closed, when there is nothing standing between them but three minutes of a thin stream of water. But each time he hesitates and thinks for too long, stares for much longer, and their showers end with no kiss, just wet footprints leading back to the lockers. And as the years go by, Jinyoung grows from a lanky teenager to a man with proper shoulders, with a rippled torso, with full thighs and a pert bottom and arms tight with definition; all that training stacks muscle on his frame and Jaebum still finds himself hesitating with the kiss, except now the longer he stares, the more blood rushes south, between his legs. He takes shorter showers then and leaves to the lockers with a wet erection swinging between his legs, hoping Jinyoung hasn’t caught a glimpse. 

For years they eat together, too, and Jaebum thinks of kissing him then, reaching over and wiping crumbs from the corner of Jinyoung’s mouth, brushing his thumb across his bottom lip, letting it linger before he leans over and kisses him. But instead, he just chews his food slowly and stares at Jinyoung, who notices his gaze, his eyes. He never says anything, just starts eating faster and faster, sloppy and nervous under Jaebum’s watch. He makes a mess of his mouth and Jaebum’s stomach feels empty with  _ need _ because there are more crumbs on Jinyoung’s lips than he could hope for, and when he drinks water, some of it lingers at the corner of his lip, a tiny drop that glistens when Jinyoung turns his head to check if Jaebum is still watching him. Sometimes there’s a smudge of sauce on his chin, mustard on his jaw, an eyelash on his cheekbone, tiny debris that Jaebum wants nothing more than to clean just so he can have an excuse to get close, to lean in, to see the pores of his nose, to dip his head and claim a single kiss from him. Somehow, though, he’s grown shy around him, and all he manages to do is hand Jinyoung a napkin which makes his ears turn bright red as he says “thank you” with a tiny little voice that makes Jaebum’s heart flutter. He only finds the courage when Jinyoung excuses himself and quickly leaves.

“You know I love you, right?” he says to the empty seat,  wishing Jinyoung would come back. 

For years, they train together, and Jaebum wishes he could kiss him then, in the shooting range, on the track, on the mat they practice combat on. He wishes he could see something off about Jinyoung’s stance when he shoots, that he could volunteer to help and stand behind him. He wishes he could settle his chin on Jinyoung's shoulder, put his hands over his, Jaebum’s chest against his back, Jinyoung’s bottom nestled against Jaebum’s hips. He wishes he could say, “like this,” and pull the trigger so the recoil trembles through them both. He wishes Jinyoung would turn around and their lips would meet — first by accident so Jinyoung would apologize and pull away with wide, panicked eyes and Jaebum could take his chin between two fingers and pull him forward again, claiming a kiss, maybe a second, probably a third. But even on the first day, Jinyoung has perfect posture, perfect aim and it’s Jaebum that has to put in extra time to keep up. He wishes he could pin Jinyoung down to the mat when they spar, claim his lips as a prize, but Jinyoung will always remain undefeated. Even when they run, Jaebum wishes he could spank him as he sprints past so Jinyoung tries the same, so they trip and fall down and scrape their knees and laugh so Jaebum can roll over, pull Jinyoung into his arms, press their lips together, but Jinyoung's legs are longer, so much faster.

It isn’t until they move into the same apartment, the same room, that Jaebum kisses him. Jinyoung shows up with a box of clothes, books, a spool of blue thread, a needle, and an old astronomical map. When Jaebum asks him about them, Jinyoung just says, “Sentimental items.”

Just like that, the topic is dropped, as if it’s been thrown and locked into a chest. 

They don’t talk about it again until weeks later, a few days before Jinyoung turns nineteen. The night is especially hot and they can both hear each other shifting in bed, stretching, yawning, flipping their pillows in hopes that the other side is cooler. Then Jinyoung stops moving and Jaebum figures he went to sleep until he hears his voice, “I didn’t mean to be dismissive.” 

At first Jaebum thinks he’s hearing things, closer to sleep than he thought he had been. Still, he answers, “About what?” 

A long pause fills the room, the rustle of sheets, and then Jinyoung’s voice again. 

“When I said sentimental items — I didn’t mean to be dismissive. I — it’s hard for me to talk about.” 

“You don’t have to tell me, you know.”

“I know,” Jinyoung says, “I  _ want _ to.”

The night still boils outside their room but they turn on a single flashlight and point the beam to the roof so the room lights up in a dim orange. Jinyoung takes out the spool of thread, hands it to Jaebum. He pulls out the map, too, and opens it on the floor beside them. They both sit facing each other, their legs folded under them. They wear no socks, no shoes, no shirt, just pairs of underwear. Jaebum turns the spool in his fingers, careful not to prick his thumb with the needle stabbed in there; he treats it as if it were gold, and by the way Jinyoung looks his way, wary of his touching, it might just be worth its weight in it.

“It reminds me of my mother,” Jinyoung says and Jaebum looks up to meet his eyes; even though the room isn’t bright, he can see Jinyoung’s eyes start to tear up, “I used to think I could fix all our problems if I could just close the rift. And I thought all I had to do was reach up and sew it shut.” 

Jaebum pictures it: Jinyoung, much shorter, smaller frame, chubby cheeks with his hands raised, a threaded needle in one, sewing together the sky and the glowing rift closing in a single stitch. Without thinking, he smiles and Jinyoung smiles, too. 

“And the map?” 

Their gaze falls to the tiny galaxy printed on the page; Jinyoung hums, smiling to himself. 

“Some guy said that the rift had another sky from another time. This map is old. I guess I liked that idea, especially after that ship got sucked in. I like imagining they’re still alive, just in another year. I hope they’re happy.” 

“My dad was on that mission.”

Jinyoung turns to Jaebum, not alarmed or worried or sympathetic but simply there, watching him, maybe curious, maybe lost in thought and Jaebum has the sensation of seeing the night sky, not celestial or overbearing but simply there, blinking, a purple canvas studded with stars. Jinyoung reaches over and takes the spool of thread from Jaebum’s hands, sets it on top of the map and then he looks Jaebum in the eye and takes his hands in his. 

“Do you miss him?” 

Jaebum is crying before the question ends, though he isn’t sure why — he’s never cried about his father — but he figures Jinyoung must be the reason; Jinyoung who’s holding his hands, rubbing the spaces between his fingers and Jinyoung who’s looking at him with empathy and not pity and Jinyoung who simply  _ understands _ , quiet Jinyoung who listens, who cares, who dreams of other skies and other galaxies and of closing a rip in the universe like he were sewing a button back on a shirt. Sweet Jinyoung who wakes him up every morning, who takes an extra bottle of water to practice in case Jaebum forgets his, who leads his own team much better than Jaebum could ever dream to do. Beautiful Jinyoung, who’s grown from a cute teenager into a handsome man with solid eyebrows and a lovely nose, even lovelier lips and before he knows it, Jaebum is leaning forward, getting closer and closer and Jinyoung also leans forward, set on meeting him in the middle.

The flashlight tips over and the room goes dark and Jaebum has to hold Jinyoung’s cheek with one hand and his neck with the other in order to guide himself to Jinyoung’s lips. When they finally kiss, Jaebum sees a night sky behind his eyes: not the one above them, but the one from the map, alive and pulsing, and he sees themselves — Jinyoung and Jaebum — as twin stars in that sky, orbiting around each other, spinning slowly and patiently in a circle, waiting a hundred years to meet in the middle and he would wait a hundred more if it led to this kiss. And the press of lips turns into something more, something longer, because Jinyoung starts to kiss him back — with tongue, with gentle bites, sucking on his lower lip. Their noses rub against each other, against their cheeks, and Jinyoung’s gets wet with Jaebum’s tears, but this doesn’t slow them down. They pull apart with a breath and Jinyoung’s teeth drag over Jaebum’s lip. 

For a second, Jaebum regrets exposing himself like this, wonders if Jinyoung even feels the same way. He’s glad it's dark because his cheeks are flushed, his expression nervous, but then he feels Jinyoung’s hand against his cheek, his thumb wiping away a stray tear. 

“I was getting worried,” Jinyoung says, as if reading his mind, “I thought you’d never kiss me.” 

—

Eight hours into orbit, each second putting miles between the earth and his ship, the rift finally comes into view.

He’s seen the diagrams, the reproductions, the estimations of size, the energy maps, the graphs detailing its brightness, raw pictures from telescopes, and he’s even seen it himself, embedded into the sky like a paused lightning bolt but nothing prepares him for the beauty of seeing it in space.

From afar, the rift looks a star has split open, leaking its glowing insides into a night sky. It has the shape of an upside down tornado except this tornado is made entirely of light, moves slowly — as slow as oceans in the distance — and stirs around yellow, glowing thread that disperses into hazy clouds of sunlight. From this close, their planet is hard to see; it wears a curtain of light, fed by the fountain of the rift, and Jaebum has a hard time looking away until Hyunwoo starts yelling on one of the screens. 

“Pay attention! We’re going to activate the propellers so you can go into the veil slowly. Once inside, we’re going to let you flow with the current, just like we planned. We’ll keep you far enough that you don’t run any risk of getting pulled in. Everything should go just like in training.” 

Jaebum looks at Hyunwoo on the screen, then at the other eight screens. Each member of his team and each member of Jinyoung’s are there, all with headsets, all going over calculations they’ve perfected over the years. Blown up the largest is the screen with Jinyoung, who looks just as concentrated as he does in training. 

“How’re you doing, Jinyoung?” he asks and Jinyoung looks up at the camera and smiles, gives a thumbs-up. Everything is going so well that it’s hard to believe he was nervous at all. They’d been planning for years, training for much longer, and the mission is so simple that he wonders if it is just as easy as stitching a hole closed. 

That’s if the bombs work and if the rift functions as they planned, but those are things he can worry about later, after they detonate; after they know if they’ll survive a few more decades; after they’re outside of that gorgeous spinning cocoon that they float towards. The closer they get, the less it looks like solid light and it covers and fills their ships with bright oranges that make the interior look like it’s on fire, even with the heavily tinted windows. 

“Remember, it’s just light,” Yugyeom says and both Jaebum and Jinyoung nod, “So in itself it isn’t dangerous — the heat and the currents are what you’re going to feel. You’re going to feel a tremble but it’ll be fine. We need you guys to enter at an angle.” 

Even from a distance, Jaebum’s team controls most of the navigation. They check the pressure, the distance, the expected resistance, the estimated gravity from the rift. All Jaebum has to do is fine-tune their details and change his trajectory according to what he sees and feels. 

“Jinyoung,” Wonpil says, “I need you closer to Jaebum — you’re a little too far away. We need you both to enter at the same time.” 

Jinyoung nods and his team busies themselves with checking the trajectories and estimations once, twice, even a third time before Jinyoung’s ship starts to spit out tiny flames and it sails closer to Jaebum’s, pauses beneath him. He looks at every face on the screen, looks at Jinyoung chewing his lip as he concentrates, steers as if everything depends on him and the angle of his fingers, the bend of his wrist. 

“I love you, Jinyoung,” Jaebum says, ignores the groans from his team, the shy smiles on Jinyoung’s team. Jinyoung himself doesn’t smile, just shakes his head.

“If we pull this off, I get to top for a month,” Jinyoung says and every single member of their team either laughs or screams and Jaebum feels warm, not because of the sunlight outside but because he can see his future in every single face on the screen. His cheeks flush, his smile widens into a grin, Jinyoung finally looks up at the camera and he looks beautiful; lit in oranges, in yellows, looks painted by a master's brush. Jaebum’s heart tightens like a fist — it feels so close to bursting from sheer joy. 

“Okay, boys,” Jackson says once everyone settles down, “We’ve got a world to save. On the count of three, steer your ships into the swirl. We’ll do as much as we can from here.” 

Jaebum has gone over this simulation hundreds of time with Jinyoung and they fall into sync. They move in unison, identical in the buttons they press, in the direction they squint. Jaebum looks out at the rift and it looks even more transparent than before, as if the light is not composed of one source but of layers and layers of shining fabric. He tries to look in the distance, where the rift begins or ends — they can never be sure — and he doesn’t see a hot, white light like he thought, but nothing at all. The light looks like it tapers off and fades and beyond it are stars, as if the rift were going to fade off on its own if given the time.

“Okay,” Mark counts, “One, two, three — go!” 

And Jaebum pushes a lever forward and his ship sails forward. They draw closer into the light until they are in the light — surrounded by it, flooded by it, almost breathing it. The ship starts to tremble and it turns at Jaebum’s command; the trembling lessens; the pressure levels maintain themselves; everyone on the monitors lets out the breath of relief. Within a few minutes, the current drags his and Jinyoung’s ships along and the team cheers and Jaebum promises himself that when they get back on earth, when the sun stops burning as bright, and when the climate allows, he's going to personally plant a garden for Jinyoung, just to see him smile. 

“Fuck yeah,” Hyunwoo says, “Just like we fucking planned. In an hour you’ll be close enough to —” 

The screen cuts off. One by one, each monitor turns off, and a few seconds later, every light in his dashboard flickers. For a second everything is dark save for the light spilling in from outside, but then it all comes back. Faces fill his monitor, levels light up and readjust, every reading goes back to normal — just like they planned. 

“Jaebum, can you hear me?” Jackson asks and Jaebum nods. 

“Yeah, what was that?”

“I guess there’s more electricity in the field than we thought, but we planned in case this happened. Everything should be back up.” 

Jaebum looks relieved until he goes to check Jinyoung’s face, wonders briefly if he’d been as scared as him, but his face isn’t there. The window with his camera is empty. Then he notices Yugyeom’s nervous face, and Wonpil speaking loudly, repeating the same phrase.

“Jinyoung, can you hear us? Jinyoung — we lost contact, confirm your status. Jinyoung, come in, please, Jinyoung —”

To the side, Youngjae is shaking his head, talking to someone off the screen. 

“We’re not getting anything back,” he says and Jaebum’s blood goes cold.

“Jinyoung,” he says, “Jinyoung, come in — Jinyoung.” 

His hand tightens into a fist and he punches the screen, but nothing happens. He leans forward, looks outside, and he can see Jinyoung’s ship in the near distance, moving faster than his, being carried by the current — still slow, but farther away by the second. 

“Jinyoung!” Jaebum starts to yell and Jinyoung’s team does, too, “Jinyoung come in — let me try a close-range signal.” 

He presses the button, turns on the frequency; he can make out a few strands of feedback but the rest is silence. His heart slows, almost stops beating altogether and it sinks slowly to his stomach, as if sinking to a tomb; and he’s sure he’ll be in a tomb, too, if Jinyoung doesn’t respond. 

Jaebum leans forward in his seat and barely makes out the shape of Jinyoung’s ship riding the current of light, floating closer and closer to the rift. In a second he’s crying, still yelling, hoping that somehow Jinyoung can hear him — can  _ feel  _ him. And when that doesn’t work, even if he’s never believed in a god, he closes his eyes and starts to pray. 


	3. time .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know if i did the foreshadowing work that this last chapter needed?? so i'm sorry if it's a little confusing.... i struggled with it a lot but alskdjf here it is

In a post-Rift world, death saturates everything. Staying outside for too long can kill someone in months, not drinking enough water, scarce as it is, can kill someone else before they turn twenty, and, with the lack of plants, breathing non-treated air can kill someone in days. There are suddenly more ways to die than to live, so people, always adaptable, lose their fear of death itself. They start to fear ‘bad’ deaths instead, which include dying in hospital with lumps of brain cells growing in their legs, or dying of thirst on the street, gasping through a dry throat, their bodies bloating and deflating like a balloon. 

They no longer dream of long lives, just long enough to be happy, to have a death of old age, simple complications they can understand — a faulty heart, too-small lungs, kidneys that simply won't work. This means they've escaped the rift, that they have, on some level, lived a normal life.

A good death is a blessing. Even a bad one is a release, an end to suffering, at least for those outside of Quadrant I. 

Jinyoung, though, has never wanted to die. He is afraid of what he doesn't understand. The darkness before his earliest memory and after the second he inhabits terrifies him, especially as a child. His mother does not believe in a god, and he is left to grapple with the question of 'why?' on sleepless nights. Why did the rift open up? Why is his grandmother dying? Why does his mother not care? Why them? Why him? 

His fear, though, comes to an end when he brushes up against death for the first time. 

He is nine years old and wearing a dress-shirt and slacks, clothes from a time that wasn't as hot, when the air didn’t boil. He's sweating even before he puts it on, but his mother forces him to slip into the sleeves, to do every button. He wears shined shoes, combs his hair back. A tie presses its knot against the base of his neck. He's in front of a mirror, complaining as his mother fusses in the bathroom. She had never been one to keep up her appearances, but that day she chooses to tie up her hair, to put on makeup, to wear his grandmother's old business clothes. That day she walks around taller on heels, hangs pearls from her neck, stabs her ears with small diamonds. He, meanwhile, tightens the belt around his hips, runs to open the door when his grandmother arrives.

Then he's pressing up against the window of the viewing hall, his nose pressed against the glass so each breath fogs it up. Below, in the actual hall, is a few rows of seats facing a single table, lifted higher than the rest. It used to a courthouse, his grandmother told him when they'd arrived, and now it's where the Quadrant leaders hold their meetings and make choices on their collective future. On the elevated table are five representatives: two from Quadrant I, two from Quadrant II, one from Quadrant III, and none from Quadrant IV. Across from them is a small podium with a microphone, where his mother stands. 

He remembers the gush of pride at seeing her there, in front of such important people. Even if he doesn't understand who they are, barely understands who his mother is, the people in the viewing hall remind him; there might not be any representatives for Quadrant IV down there, in the official meeting, but there are many up here in the audience, all of them buzzing with excitement at the sight of Jinyoung's mother. There are no seats in the hall, packed and stuffy, filled with too many bodies, aching with too many pains. The hall hovers over the room below, so they all have a clear view of his mother's frame, tiny in the distance, as she begins her speech. 

She speaks for ten minutes, this he will be told later, but all he remembers is her voice, the hush of the viewing room, every breath held in the throat when a man's voice, one of the representatives of Quadrant I, cuts her off. Below, the room grows silent as the man and his mother start to argue, shout words back and forth and above, the room grows frantic with chants, erupts in anger, in the rhythmic pound of fists against glass. They are angry, and when he reads the transcripts of this meeting years after his mother's death, he'll understand why: his mother, the only person willing to dedicate their life for equal access to water in Quadrant IV, demands the pass of a measure that will give that Quadrant aid, except the representatives don't want to hear it — their water reserve, after all, is theirs to keep, not to share. At nine, all he understands is that hope slides cleanly into anger, and that no matter how tightly he squeezes his grandmother's hand, his fear pounding in his head doesn't go away. 

The memory flickers and skips like an old tape. One moment his mother is trying to finish her speech, then she's yelling, then there are men escorting her outside. Then he sees her in the hall, distraught, crying, slumped against the wall and sliding down until she collapses on the floor. He runs to her side, his entire body pulses with a quickened heartbeat. He brushes her hair, kisses her head, pats her shoulder, everything she does for him whenever he cries but she won't stop. Then his grandmother is there, speaking softly, going through the same routine as Jinyoung but his mother is beyond words, beyond help. The fire in her eyes has been put out and she has begun what Jinyoung will recognize in retrospect as her grand decline. From here, she starts to race towards a bad end: a rift-related death. 

It must take a few minutes for her to stand, but to Jinyoung, sweaty and parched, his body tense with the stress of seeing his mother weep, it seems like hours. Then she stands, and they go to leave but then the people from Quadrant IV are there, also crying, though with rage. They say the fight isn't done, that the fight is just beginning, that their struggle is long and Jinyoung wants to cry, too, because can't they see? Can't they see that his mother is done? That she is weak and exhausted and empty? There is no fight for her, he wants to scream, wants to point at her and tell them she is done, that she has tried and failed. 

But his mother nods, cries a new set of tears and they cry with her. 

Then the men come. With the way his memory leaps, first there is a single man talking into his shoulder then there are four, then twelve, then a mob of men surrounding them and the Quadrant IV protesters are still shouting and Jinyoung hides his face in his mother's shirt and she hugs him tight. His grandmother covers him from the other side, too, so there is a shell of women protecting him. Then, just as the men had arrived, their hands appear like hungry crows and start to pick at the crowd, pull at fabric and flesh and hair until every shout loses its shape and words blend into a chorus of screams. 

Jinyoung closes his eyes and clings tighter to his mother as the crowd starts shifting, tightening around them, bodies bumping into other bodies, limbs latching and locking, hands holding on to what they can. There are fingers that scratch at his ankles, fingers with fistfuls of fabric that tear his shirt apart as they are dragged away. 

Some screams cut off with a blunt noise, like a thump against the walls, but some only pause, then continue spilling out of throats, sounding wet, almost like gargling. The tighter he holds on to his mother, the tighter she holds onto him and he thinks this is enough, that they are safe, that maybe being from Quadrant II isn't as bad as  his mother makes it seem because at least they are still alive and not dragged across the floor by their hair but then his grandmother screams and Jinyoung feels her body snatched away and then there are more hands on him, on his arms, on his legs, and Jinyoung is small enough to be pulled up so that his feet don't touch the ground and so that he yells on top of his lungs for his mom, mom, mom,  _ please _ , mom, help, but the men drag her away and his grandmother calls his name and Jinyoung is sure that he will die until everything stops moving.

The sounds are still there: a woman on the ground screaming, pleading with the officers, and a man grunting in between punches, and even his grandmother gasping, then crying quietly. 

Jinyoung opens his eyes and he sees his mother: her eyes glow with a different kind of fire and there is a fist in her hair and men with their hands wrapped around one of her arms and two legs and everything looks like it should still be in motion but nobody moves because his mother has taken one of the guns off their belts and aimed it right above Jinyoung's head. The man releases him and Jinyoung falls on his knees, then springs to his feet, runs to his mother and wraps his arms around her middle, still screaming for her, still crying.

The rest of the memory is incomplete, broken into different senses that surface in his nightmares. Sometimes he dreams just of the screaming, the sound of a gun clattering on the ground, his mother whispering his name into his ear, the murmur of his grandmother's sobs. Sometimes he dreams of just touch, of hands crawling out of the dark to wrap around his wrists, his ankles, or the fabric of his mother's shirt underneath his fingers, one moment there, the next gone. Sometimes he dreams of his mother's face, twisted in agony first, then worry, then loosened into a fiery rage that burns him with a single look. 

After that, he no longer fears death. He knows what it is: death is an aimed gun, a thrown shout, a sweaty hand slipping from his hold. Death is not enough water, a voice left unheard, protests that end in blood. Death is wanting too much when there is so little sympathy, so little room, so little love. 

He's still unsure of what life is. 

—

"Hello?" 

There is no answer but his own voice, echoed in the empty ship. The monitors have all gone dark and, in their place, glowing drops appear in front of him. At first he thinks there must be a leak in the ship, that the light has started to seep in, that it floats in front of him like liquid gold. Then he realizes he's crying, and these tiny stars are his own tears drinking in the light from outside.

He reaches up, wipes the tears away, but the tiny, floating suns are still there, swirling like dust caught in the light. 

Outside of the window, he sees the full breadth of the rift's length. Stripes of light all point to a single center, like a cone, but the light ends abruptly against something black at its center, flat, inky, with no depth and no stars beyond. It looks like someone has cut out a piece of the universe and left a hole in its place.

He stares at it for a long time until the ship keeps spinning and he's left to admire the rest of the rift, like a current of light outside, and it looks beautiful — the best things in life are always buried in the worst, he laments, which makes him think of his mother. 

A fresh set of tears spill out and the small galaxy floating in front of him doubles its size, and it makes him think of his own life; after all, what else is there to think about when he's floating in space? When his ship is pulled slowly towards a dark center? A middle so dark that he's sure that is where life ends, permanently. There will be no after-life for him, there will be no miracle. 

Yet, as the ship spins one more time and he's faced with the black spot again, he thinks of the first ship that got stuck in its center. Wonders if it's still in there, spinning endlessly, stuck in a single moment in time and he thinks of the man claiming that at its center is another sky and the thread of time, waiting to be snipped. He thinks of his mother and hopes she is there, swimming in the dark, somewhere cool and refreshing, somewhere she does not have to think of saving anyone but herself. He thinks of Jaebum, too, safe in his ship, so far from his own. 

And as he thinks of them, his glowing tears, now standing still in front of him, almost in place, stuck in time themselves, take on a different form. Seeing them, thinking of those he loves, he is suddenly struck by how small his life is. His life might be a single droplet, and their lives are the ones floating around it. What makes him so important? What is his life compared to theirs? Why is he crying over his own death when it could save theirs? When his life is being given so that others can live? Isn't that what his mother wanted? Isn't that what he wanted? The point of this mission? What he and Jaebum had trained for? 

He wipes his eyes again but there are no more tears to replace the last ones. He reaches up and swats them away so he has a clear view of the hole in the rift, which isn't as dark as he thought it was before. It's still inky black but he can make a single dot of light, and after a few more spins, he can make out a few more glowing points. They are stars, he thinks, but not the stars that they're used to seeing. These have a halo of violet around them, something he's never even seen — but maybe this is what stars are supposed to look like. Lavender dots against a deep blue, framed by the most dazzling yellow. 

Then the screens click back on. The readings flash back on the screen, all glowing red — he's beyond saving now — and then the monitors turn on and the faces of the teams appear, one by one, like starlight finally hitting earth; points of light blinking on. 

They are all yelling his name, all worried, frantic, and last, Jaebum's face appears, just as grief-stricken, just as panicked. They are all screaming things that he should do, things he shouldn't do, but he already knows what has to be done. He's read it in the purple stars from another sky, twinkling in the distance, calling to him already. They have his mother's voice, steady, firm, a fire in the dark. 

He looks at each face once and is overwhelmed with gratitude for having known them, that their lives have brushed up against each other, no matter how briefly.

Then he turns to Jaebum; he smiles; the tears return but he is no longer afraid, no longer sad. 

"Jaebum," he says, turns down the volume on the other monitors, "I want you to do something for me." 

—

After they start dating officially, Jaebum takes Jinyoung to meet his mother. 

"You never talk about her," Jinyoung mentions on the train ride and Jaebum shrugs.

"There's not much to say," he says. Then adds, "Our relationship is complicated." 

What he means, though, is that his mother never wanted him. His parents had married young, when his father was just starting his sharp rise into worldwide fame then disaster, when his mother had just finished her schooling. And only after his mother got pregnant, which he finds out from his father on the single night he comes home drunk. 

Jaebum opens the door for him, helps him stumble in. He's small enough that his father’s body is too heavy, he nearly drops him on the ground, but his father just needs a guide. A steady pillar to put his hand against. Then, at the foot of the stairs, he pushes Jaebum away. His confession is slurred, as if each word has got stuck on a strand of spit, glued to his teeth. His tongue can barely push the sound out, but Jaebum understands enough.  

Their marriage had been a way to keep their reputation intact.

“She should have just gotten rid of you,” he says, “Maybe she’d be fucking happier.” 

His mother doesn't find out, his dad doesn't seem to remember, and Jaebum doesn't tell another soul, but he keeps that knowledge inside of him, folded like paper, slipped into a drawer with the rest of his growing suspicions. Suddenly, his parents don't seem as happy together; he notices their long silences, the distance between them when they sit; he notices how his mother never smiles around his father, how they speak in short, tense sentences. 

Then he notices other peculiarities: whenever he calls for his mother, she turns to look at him with wide eyes, like she's afraid. Then that expression softens into a light shock, as if surprised to find that she has a son at all. Her touch never lingers, never grows past a single tap on the shoulder when he cries, or the stroke of her fingers against his cheek when he scrapes his knees. She feeds him just enough love to get by, gives him a taste so he craves it, aches for it. 

When he's shipped off to MESO to follow in his father's footsteps, she never calls. She writes a single letter every month, then once a year, then they stop completely when he turns sixteen. They talk, sometimes, but nothing more than formalities; she never asks about his life, he never asks about hers. 

And he never feels the need to talk to her, not until now. Not until Jinyoung crashes into his life and he suddenly yearns for his mother, not her as a person, perhaps, but as the figure. This is what couples do, he thinks, they meet each other's parents. 

So Jaebum takes Jinyoung along through his old neighborhood: paved roads, large houses, even fake plants. It's as if the rift had never torn into the sky — this is what money is able to buy. Jinyoung is awed, speaks little, though Jaebum hopes that he will talk to his mother and they will grin and look at Jaebum and smile at him, too. He hopes his mother tells a story from his childhood, that Jinyoung will laugh his loud, clumsy laugh and that his mother will find it endearing, that she will pull him away before they leave, whisper in his ear that he's done a good job, that he's found love, that he has discovered what her and his father never got a chance to. 

But the visit is only five minutes long. His mother, after years, is tired; the energy taken from her, the rift having sucked her dry like a lemon. She rots like a rind, does not even stand to greet them with a hug. Jinyoung is all polite words and neat edges but his mother almost waves him away, smiles only when they're ready to leave, when Jinyoung bows his head, tells her it was a pleasure — an honor to meet her.

Jaebum, throughout, is stunned. He does not say anything after they leave, stays mute on the train ride back home. 

It's Jinyoung that breaks the silence. Halfway to MESO, with an endless desert outside, bright and glaring even through tinted windows, Jinyoung reaches over and takes Jaebum's hand. Jaebum, who has managed to stay in the same position for almost the entire ride, his hands on the table but his shoulders sagging, his head hanging, finally looks up. 

"It's fine," Jinyoung says, "You don't have to look so sad." 

Of course, Jaebum thinks, even without saying it, Jinyoung has read his thoughts, knows exactly what he wants to say, the apologies he can't put together. All the words are there, cluttering his throat, but they lack order. What could he even say? Apologize for his erratic mother? Why did he think things would be different? 

Though the last question has a clear answer: Jinyoung. His life had changed when Jinyoung arrived, as if making space for him, and somehow he thought everything else would change, too. That his mother would become affectionate, that the rift would close.

"I'm sorry," Jaebum says, finally. Jinyoung shakes his head. 

"You don't have to be." 

"I thought she would be different, I don't know," he holds Jinyoung's gaze, finds such peace in there that he has to pause, admire it. His eyes are so dark, with even darker eyelashes; he can see the trace of those wrinkles that show up when he smiles honestly. "I thought she would be happy for us."

"Maybe she is happy, in her own way."

"I don't think she's happy for anyone."

Jaebum sighs, leans back. Jinyoung pulls Jaebum's hand towards his lips, kisses the back of it.

"She's your mother, I'm sure she's happy for you." 

Loosened by Jinyoung's presence, without much thought, he says, "She didn't even want me — I was an accident." 

Jinyoung's expression doesn't change at once, but it does soften and shift, as if he's processing the information; as if being an accident is something he has to understand, a foreign concept to him. Then he smiles, impishly.

"Everyone's an accident, Jaebum. Even when you want a kid, the possibility of of an exact one being born is so small. And as an accident, that chance is even tinier," he pauses to smile, to lean closer, as if sharing a secret, "That means you're impossible. That means I'm impossible. That means we're impossible." 

Jaebum narrows his eyes, bites his lip so he doesn't smile — but the shape surfaces anyway.

"You're cheesy sometimes," he tells him, but Jinyoung doesn't hear.

"And then the chance of us meeting at the time we did, the chance of me being alive, of you being alive, of our parents and grandparents and everyone before them — we shouldn't be here, but here we are, alive and impossible."

"And?" 

Jinyoung cocks up an eyebrow, "And what?" 

"What does it mean?"

He leans closer and closer until he can feel Jinyoung's breath on his lips, until his heart starts to drum quicker, until his hand, still in Jinyoung's hold, starts to sweat. Somehow he's nervous again, seventeen and shy, dreaming of the boy in the other bed.

"It means," Jinyoung says, slow, "That everything about us is meant to be."

And when he kisses Jaebum, he believes it. When his eyes close, when their lips fit together and the world recedes from his mind, he believes it because this kiss feels nothing less than impossible.

—

He should have seen it coming, but he's still surprised. 

Jinyoung floating away, disconnected for half an hour, the faces on the screen frantic with each silent second. Then Jinyoung's screen flickering on, his face coming into view, crying but with a smile. A look of resignation, a look of optimism. He sees this coming, of course: fear mixing with hope on Jinyoung's features, just like it had for the past few years. 

He expects this: Jinyoung, selfless, suggesting they follow through with the mission anyway, that he can detonate the bombs and his ship at the same time, that he has enough fuel to get into position. 

He expects this: his team arguing about strategies to save Jinyoung, to avoid the plan, to ditch salvation in favor of the person they've all come to love and respect and treasure as their own. 

He expects this: the pain in his chest as his heart wrestles with the idea of Jinyoung being gone, disappearing from the universe, as if someone had come in and cut out a hole in the fabric of space. 

And all these things arrive and overwhelm him and Jaebum starts to cry, too, but the voices fade away and the glaring light outside retreats and he's left alone with Jinyoung. There is only his eyes, his nose, those cheeks — there is only them, both crying, Jinyoung trying to keep his smile while Jaebum's face crumples into grief over and over again, as if one isn't enough. As if he has more hearts, and each of them break separately. 

The world, he thought, would end with the rift tearing open further, the world would go up in flames. That he and Jinyoung would be sleeping, that they would feel nothing as they were taken into oblivion holding hands, smiling even in sleep. But the world does not end so loud and grand, it ends with silence, with his head nodding gently as Jinyoung proposes his plan. It ends with him turning off his communication with control so only Jinyoung and him are left, going over this new procedure. It ends with him overriding the programmed controls so his own bombs do not float into the rift, but towards Jinyoung's ship, flying faster now with propulsion, headed right into its center. It ends with the sob in his throat as Jinyoung smiles and silence settles around them. It ends with their eyes meeting, with their gazes tangling, holding each other like warm hands with desperate fingers, perhaps for the last time. 

"I figured it out," Jinyoung says after a second. They both ignore the tiny beeps in the background that indicate Jinyoung's descent into the rift, the dangers he's encountering, as if his ship, in the last moments, were trying to save itself.

Jaebum swallows the knot in his throat, then says, "Figured out what?" 

"What I want. They said we could have anything after the mission, but I want something from you." 

"Anything." Jaebum is breathless, his voice hoarse, not even a whisper. 

"Plant a garden," Jinyoung says, wiping his cheek, "For me. I'll be there, watching. I wish we could have met in one and gotten lost together. Maybe we can still meet when this is over." 

Jaebum just nods, tries to keep his eyes from tearing up; tries to memorize Jinyoung's face as it is, complete with fear, with joy, the look of someone who does not shy away from the dark, so unlike himself. Then Jinyoung whispers, "I love you." 

"I love you, too," Jaebum says, his voice fractured, broken, but the screen cuts into static, then goes dark. He's alone again and in that silence, he pulls the lever to release the bombs, presses the button to transfer the new target to their program. Then he leans forward, buries his face in his arms, and sobs. His entire body trembles and shakes and it isn't just one thing inside him that breaks, but many, as if an entire shelf of glass has fallen over, has shattered and there is no hope of picking any of it up, not without it slicing his fingers, not without bleeding. 

He does not look outside to Jinyoung's ship, he does not trace the path of the bombs, he does not wait for that final flash that they knew would come. 

Instead he counts the seconds under his breath, then the minutes, and when he counts five after the collision and no sound has come, no great flare of light has filled his ship, he looks up. 

He cannot see Jinyoung's ship anymore, cannot see half the rift. Its center has grown, though, and all the sunshine pooled in the rift races towards it. The dark drinks up the light and Jaebum's eyes widen in shock; there is no sign of the bombs; there is no sign of ships; there is no sign of anything but light bending, crumpling like paper, throwing itself into this dark violet that keeps getting bigger and bigger until it, too, folds. 

There is, at once, light and no light, and when the rift around Jaebum's ship starts to slide towards the center, he looks down where the side of his ship looks like it’s stretching. One inch of metal stretches endlessly, becomes a long, silver line and then the rest of his ship follows suit, everything pointed towards the center of the rift.

He lifts up a finger and that, too, stretches, but he feels nothing. The world becomes lines of light and then his wrist stretches, then his arm, then his shoulder, then he sees nothing at all. 

* * *

A man watches the babies in the hospital nursery sleep, his eyes fixed on a boy towards the edge of the room. He cups his hands against the glass, peers inside, tries to focus his gaze on the tiny body wrapped in white. There is his son, he thinks, and his heart swells up with a new feeling. He is not sure what fatherhood entails, but it excites him. He steps back from the glass and notices another man, a guitar on his back.

"One of them yours?" he asks and the man with the guitar nods, gives him a shy smile. 

"Wasn't here for the birth — had to leave in the middle of a concert and drive all the way over here." 

"Which one is yours?" 

The musician points to the baby next to his, and the man grins.

"The one on the left is mine," he says, "His name is Jaebum, like his grandfather." 

The other man just nods and a hush fills the hall as they watch the babies. None of them stir, though, beneath the tiny blankets, he can make out the movement of their lungs rising and falling, like small gasps strung out.

Then the musician says, "I better get going — I don't know what my son's name is, my wife wouldn't tell me. She's feisty. I have to go see if she's still awake."

He watches the man nod at him, then smile, then disappear into the hall, the shape of his guitar large in the empty hallway. He notices the bundle in his right hand but he can't make out what it is. He turns back to his son behind the glass. His fingers press against it and he sighs again. Tomorrow he'll call his work and request to be taken off the flying schedules; there are other pilots to take his routes. And if they refuse, he thinks, then quitting is the next option. There is nothing he wants more than to be there with his child, to cradle him, to build a home — a family. 

Meanwhile, the musician makes it down the hall, turns right. He can't shake his son's tiny face from his thoughts. He has never wanted to stay in place — it's his favorite part about touring as a musician, the constant movement, the traveling home — but the tiny eyes, the tiny nose, the tiny lips have convinced him otherwise. Maybe he will settle down, he thinks. 

He makes it to his wife's room and sneaks inside. His mother-in-law, a firm, bossy lawyer, is asleep on one of the chairs. Her head lolls to the other side when his sneakers squeak against the floor, but she does not wake up.

His wife lifts her head, turns to him. She looks tired and worn, but still beautiful. She has never worn makeup, has never had to, and he falls in love with her features all over again; she looks upset, a little mad, but then he lifts the bouquet in his right hand and she smiles. He makes a wish, then, that his son will be just like his wife: selfless, unaware, both shy and aloof, timid but loyal to their beliefs — to justice, to peace, to joy. He hopes his son will have the same ears as his wife, which she fits a lock of hair behind, and her lips, her round nose.

"I brought your favorite — roses." 

She looks to the flowers, then to him. He steps closer and she sits up even more. 

“What name did you decide on?” 

His wife reaches over and takes his hand. They smile at each other. 

“Jinyoung,” she says, “His name is Jinyoung.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alkdfj i hope it's not confusing..... the rift is a tear in time....... blowing it up made it never exist........ which means timelines changed......... i'm sorry for scaring y'all..... aldfj


End file.
